vanished youth, and casting fitful gleams of sunshine across my wintry
track. And you took to me. I could see the reflection of the old
love-light, faint though it was, in the eyes that were only like hers,
and not really hers--yes it was a living pledge of her early love each
time you watched for me, and welcomed me, or singled me out in a
crowded room from all the rest. It was her inheritance, that she left
you, wherewith to gladden the life that Fate had urged her to
darken,--and you did it, my little one, though it could never be quite
the same."

"I loved you, and watched you jealously, God knows I did, but it was
not with that other dead love, which shall never be revived on earth.
In the sight of heaven we belonged to one another, a pledge is a
pledge, in spite of all the subterfuges and impediments of destiny,
and we were pledged to one another. Therefore do I weep my widowed
love, as if men had called her mine, as well as heaven."

"You were the only living reminder of my past to me, and as such I
cherished and guarded you. One day I almost forgot that you were only
what you are to me--it was the anniversary of that betrothal day, and
though the winter wind blew cold and fierce without, something of the
old fire glowed anew within my breast. I said to myself as I sauntered
along the quiet street, 'I will go and see my _other_ Amey, in
commemoration of this eventful day, perhaps she will smile a familiar
smile and speak words of kindness, like those my heart remembers, of
long ago.'"

"I went up to the house and asked, as usual, for your father," he
said, breaking into a sad smile. "They told me he was in his library,
and with the privileges of an old friend I walked unceremoniously in.